• Happy Cinco de Mayo! Go eat some tacos. I know I will tonight.
• I’ve been doing some heavy duty Wii training. I was a little sore on Saturday morning after all of the bowling and home run derby. There’s something oddly fun about trying to knock down 99 pins at once.
• I have to give some props to The Upper Crust. One recently opened five minutes from our house, and we’ve ordered from there two weeks in a row. They make a thin crust Neapolitan style pie (but without the puffy outer crust) with good quality ingredients, a nice chunky tomato sauce, and they don’t overload their pies with mountains of cheese. They’re thin and crisp and pretty damn tasty, and they practically seem good for you since they’re so light. They’re not cheap, but I think the price is justified for what it is. Armando’s still holds a special place in our hearts, but I’m willing to spread our pizza love around. They’re totally different styles, and it’s nice having options nearby. Oh, and Tess ate a whole slice by herself. She just sits there saying “yum yum yum yum yum” while shoving it in her face as fast as she can. Yes, she’s our daughter.
• After 8 years of use, it was finally time to replace my grill grates. There is 8 years worth of grease and gunk caked on the bottom of them, so they were constantly catching fire. Plus, they were starting to rust and corrode, which isn’t something you really want in your food. I replaced the enameled cast-iron grates with stainless steel ones, so we’ll see how well they work. The first run with them last night was successful, so I think I’ll be happy with them.
• Happy birthday to George. He turned 2 last Friday. Tess has been giving him a run for his money lately, and she’s completely fascinated with his crate. She’ll scoot over to it, open and close the door (sometimes with him inside), she’ll take out his food dish, try to eat his food, and then start putting her toys inside. Poor George just looks violated.
• I’ve spoken often of the glory of the tonno sandwich at Domenic’s, but they also make a fantatic chocolate chip cookie. Sharing a tonno sandwich, a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips, a limonata, and a chocolate chip cookie is a pretty perfect way to spend lunch.
• I composted all week, and I have to say, I’m hooked. Instead of throwing my vegetable scraps down the disposal or in the trash, I just keep a bowl next to me while I’m cooking and throw everything in there. When we’re finished cleaning up after dinner, I just dump the bowl in the composter outside. There were nights that we didn’t have to use the garbage disposal at all. I don’t really care that much about the actual compost that it will produce, but I just like the idea of all of this stuff breaking down naturally. I think I can get used to this.

• Do you know what’s better than spending a beautifully warm and sunny Friday and Saturday in class? Pretty much anything. OK, it wasn’t that bad, but I miss my weekends.
• On the bright side, I did get to eat in a college dining hall for the first time in 11 years. I sort of forgot what it’s like to eat in one. The quality of the food is pretty much what I expected (not great, not bad), but it’s the sheer volume that I forgot about. For $5, I could have eaten a panini, a pizza, a hamburger and fries, tacos, a turkey sandwich, a salad, 4 bowls of cereal, a make-your-own stir-fry, as many soft-serve ice cream cones as I wanted, and four bunches of bananas. The all-you-can-eat concept is not something that I’ve encountered a whole lot lately, I decided to take advantage of it and stuffed two bananas in my bag for later in the day. Of course, both got smooshed in the bottom of my bag and got banana all over everything. That’ll learn me.
• A Saturday night of Chinese Food, beers, and Wii was pretty much the perfect ending to a very long week. I must admit, I never envisioned being in my 30’s playing video games at home on a Saturday night. With my wife.
• Lawn maintainance has begun for the year. I didn’t have time until yesterday, but I finally raked up all of the dead junk, mowed the crazy-long patches in front, seeded, and fertilized. I’m hoping that the week of rain will get things off to a good start. I’ll need to be better about the deep watering this year as I sort of let it slide last year resulting in weeds taking over a good chunk of the lawn. Never again!
• I also took the opportunity to clean out my grill. And by clean, I mean hack away at the layers and layers of charred grease and fat that was caked into every nook and cranny in the grill. You know you’ve got problems when the entire inside of the grill lights on fire anytime you leave it on high with the cover closed for five minutes. I’m sure my neighborhood will appreciate me not filling the street with black smoke.
• The Lovely Tess’s favorite foods of the week: miso-glazed salmon and stir-fried broccoli with garlic. Until the third consecutive day of it when she took a handful of the broccoli and unceremoniously dumped it on the ground. The girl knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to let you know. Oh we’re going to have our hands full.
• Seriously, we’re going to compost this year. I started doing it last year and quickly lost steam. This year, I’m going to be better about it. I swear.
• So I’ve been routinely having late-night conference calls multiple times a week for school stuff. As the Lovely Suse needs to get her beauty sleep, she’ll go to bed while I’m still busy talking about school nonsense. Of course being the considerate husband that I am, I make great efforts not to wake her up when I finally go to bed. Last week I failed miserably at that. At around 11:30 on Wednesday night, with the house completely dark, I made an ill-fated attempt at returning the phone to the charger on her nightstand. It being completely pitch-black, I failed to notice the full glass of water perched atop a stack of books on the nightstand. Of course I knocked the glass over dumping the entire contents all over the table and the floor. Oh, but it gets worse. The glass happened to knock into the glass globe-like lamp that the Lovely Suse loves oh-so-much. Of course, the thing cracked and broke into multiple pieces, waking her out of a dead sleep. You know the look that a wife can give a husband when they’ve done something really stupid? Multiply that by about 1000 and you know what I experienced for about two full days. Yes, I’m an idiot. That’s been well-established by now.

• For anyone who was grossed out by last week’s post, sorry. It had to be done. Life is full of poop.
• Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!. The greatest wife of all time surprised the hell out of me and got me a Wii for my birthday. Granted, she seems to love it as much as I do (and has more time to play it than I do), but what a great gift. I haven’t owned a video game console since the original Nintendo (which pretty much defined my life from 5th grade to 8th grade), and I’ve never been much into the modern video games. I get bored easily and don’t have the patience or the time to devote to playing. But the wii changes things completely. You’ve seen how it works, and it’s every bit as fun as it looks. The interface is ingenius, and the game play is super-intuitive and fun. We’re completely hooked. We’ve only played the included sports games, but I’m looking forward to seeing how games stack up. I see Guitar Hero in my future…
• George and the Lovely Tess got me my very own Sigg Bottle. It’s light, it’s sleek, it’s sturdy, it can be used as a weapon if necessary, oh, and it holds water too. In light of the growing concerns over BPA, this bottle hopefully won’t kill me.
• The Lovely Suse and the Lovely Tess both get the day off today for Patriot’s Day. I’m so jealous. I am, however, not jealous of all the people running the marathon today. Been there, done that. And my body has no interest in ever doing that again. I’m pretty sure that if someday I decided to run another marathon, my legs would revolt and intentionally try to injure themselves to prevent me from running ever again. Let’s just say that they didn’t really enjoy the first marathon experience so much.
• Our main internet router died yesterday. You don’t realize how much you depend on the internet until you’re completely cut off from it. My email, calendar, phone numbers, and every piece of information that I seem to need is online. I started walking around the house searching for an open wireless network in the neighborhood, but amazingly, everyone had their security enabled. That’s just not right.
• My favorite pair of jeans is about to die. I give them about 4 hours before giant holes start appearing. I’ll be very sad, but I guess I can’t complain. I’ve worn them probably 5 days a week for about a year and a half. I can only ask so much from an item of clothing, right? In the meantime, there are a bunch of those iron-on patches in the inside to try to beef up the high-stress areas. It’s sort of pathetic.
• I’ve got to come clean about something: I have those little fun packs of peanut M&M’s in my desk at work. I’ve gotten into the habit of eating one a day. Seriously, there are only like 5 M&M’s in each pack, but it’s still sort of funny that I now NEED to have those in there. In fact, it’s 9:30am and I just ate an M&M.

So, today is my birthday. I’m at the age where I literally have to do the math to figure out how old I am. Seriously. 31, 32, 33? Does it really matter at this point? I suppose I’ll be excited to turn 33 because that’s Larry Bird’s number, and everyone knows that whenever I see one of those police traffic signs that tells you how fast you’re going I either speed up or slow down so that it will read “33″ and then I yell “Larry! Lary! Larry!” (the lovely Suse always enjoys that one). Otherwise, it’s a pretty uneventful day, and I’m ok with that. After the last week that I’ve had, the less excitement the better. We will skip the top ten this week in order to relate the awfulness of last week. There is much comedy in the sheer terribleness that was last week.

So the week starts off with a call from daycare saying that the Lovely Tess is sick. Poor Lovely Tess. So I pick her up and bring her home and she has a miserable time of it with a nasty stomach bug. The Lovlely Suse stays home with her Tuesday, and I take Wednesday duty. Early on Wednesday, I know that something is not feeling right. I had caught the bug earlier in the winter, so I knew what it felt like. And then, it was on. Four straight days of horror. I’ll spare you the really gory details, so let’s use some euphemisms. Let’s say I spent last week playing golf. A lot of golf. Most of those four days, I was playing more than 18 holes a day. Some days, almost 36. At some points, I was playing a hole every five minutes or so. And let’s just say that those holes had a whole lot of water hazards. Yeah. So take those facts, and add in the fact that while this was going on, I was trying to also take care of an equally sick 10-month old. Except she split her time between soiling every piece of clothing that she owned, every sheet and towel in the house, the poor dog, and taking every book off every shelf that we own. All the while I was writhing in pain on the floor.

By Thursday, the Lovely Tess was on the mend and by Friday, she was back at school. My sickness lasted through Saturday, however. This is a key point, because Saturday night would be our annual Pete’s birthday visit to Craigie Street Bistrot, our favorite restaurant around. We tossed around the idea of cancelling, but due to our schedules, we knew that it would be a long time before we would be able to find another time to go. I started feeling slightly better over the course of the day, I we would make a go of it. An hour before we left, my stomach sounded like a couple of dogs attacking one another, and I was experiencing what I can only assume were labor pains (piercing, long, unable to speak, felt like some one was taking my guts and twisting them into a knot), but miraculously, they went away just a few minutes before we left. Somehow, I had willed my body into allowing me this glorious meal. Hooray! Our karma was confirmed when for the second year in a row, we snagged one of the precious four parking spaces directly in front of the restaurant. It was time to finally indulge a bit.

Now here’s where my judgement may have been a little off. With the condition I was in, I hadn’t really eaten much of anything since Wednesday. In fact, I can’t remember ever in my life eating so little over a span of time that long. I managed to get down a couple of slices of dry toast, a couple of slices of pizza (also not the best choice, but I was desperate), and that was about it. I forgot about the little fact that your stomach tends to shrink after that. So what’s the best way of dealing with a very sensitive and very shrunken stomach? Obviously a meal consisting of a nice slab of a chicken/quail/goose liver terrine and toasts, marinated sardines, pork three ways (braised belly, of course, sausage, and confit suckling pig with the crispiest candy-like cracking imaginable), the largest and meatiest scallops I’ve ever seen, clams, mussels, and a bottle of wine. Smart, right? It was midway through our entrees that I knew that I had made a big mistake. So big that I couldn’t even finish my piece of suckling pig (although I did eat the piece of crackling that was left). Dessert was not an option . Of course, we’re then presented with complimentary ancho chili and cardamom infused hot chocolate and little madelines, which was obviously just a cruel joke. It was basically a cup of pure melted goodness, and I really couldn’t insult the chef, could I? I knew I always already going to pay for it, so I might as well finish it off in style.

The drive home was uncomfortable to say the least. I got home, took off my pants, and just laid down in bed, moaning in pain. You know that feeling of being “bad full”? The just completely uncomfortable, sweating, miserable, why the hell did I eat that much feeling? Multiply that by about 1000. The growling dogs returned to my stomach, and I had a miserable night. Was it worth it? Definitely. Amazingly, I felt completely fine the next day. It was a miracle! I had been healed by pork! Oh well, let’s hope that the start of my 32nd year is a lot nicer than the end of my 31st.

• When I as first told that this program would require about 20 hours of work a week, I tried to figure out where I would possibly find that many free hours. Apparently, I’ve found them every night of the week, during my lunch hour, and all weekend long. Thank god the Lovely Suse has hobbies. My Saturday consisted of meeting with my group for six hours in the morning and then spending another three plus hours at night trying to finish an assignment that needed to be turned in by 11:59:59pm. I believe we finally submitted it around 11:45pm. Not to cut it close or anything. On the bright side, I was immensely impressed with Skype’s conference call and file sharing capabilities. It worked like a charm.
• Here’s an article that better articulates why I love the British Gordon Ramsay and I hate the American one.
• Shangri-La’s chef’s special crispy tea smoked duck has always been a favorite of ours, but it’s also been given the thumbs-up from the Lovely Tess (and obviously George). George literally starts bouncing off the walls as soon as it comes in the house, and after the Lovely Tess’s first bite, she started pulling other things out of her mouth in order to shove more duck in it. Followed immediately by her approving “Yum yum yum yum.”
• The idea of doing Spring yard cleanup is pretty much the last thing I want to think about right now. But there are already tulips up and our chives and oregano are already starting to push through the ground. I guess it’s time to start working on year two of the great organic lawn care experiment. Oh, and there’s a gigantic dead, broken treetop hanging precariously over our garage right now. It’s supposed to be removed early this week, so hopefully no damage will be done.
• Stupid. Fricking. Broken. Computer. I hate my PC. Once again, it died last week. The new motherboard that I had put in had been giving me nothing but problems since day 1, so I finally pulled it out, put my own one back in, and decided to use the crappy but so far working on-board video. It’s back up and running, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed. Don’t be surprised to see its various parts up on Ebay sometime soon.
• It’s fantasy baseball season again, and much like last year, I plan on competing without making a single transaction all year. The first year, I won. Last year, I came in dead last. Currently, I’m in third place and falling. Oh well.
• Sorry I didn’t get this posted yesterday. I unexpectedly had to pick up a sick Lovely Tess at school. It hasn’t been a fun 24 hours. Let’s just say that our house smelled like a Chinatown fish market dumpster.

• Thanks to some fantastic craigslist snooping, the Lovely Suse snagged us a new slipper chair for the Lovely Tess’s room (though a different fabric, thank god). That is one comfy chair. I’m a little worried that I’ll fall asleep while giving her her bedtime bottle.
• It took me an entire month and a half to figure out where random sounds on my MacBook were coming from. Turns out every time one of my Skype contacts becomes available, it makes a sound. Have I mentioned how much I love my Skype? Sign on and send me your info and you might get a call from the Lovely Tess.
• Is it a conspiracy that almost evey mattress manufacturer has a name that starts with “S”? Sealy, Simmons, Serta, Sterns and Foster, etc. As if mattress shopping wasn’t confusing enough, they try to make it even harder. Not that I plan on replacing my ten year old mattress any time soon. It’s still the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept on. Ok, maybe a few hotels have had better beds, but I still love ours.
• The Lovely Suse has turned into a sewing machine. Not literally, but for a couple of weeks, she was finishing new projects every couple of days. A couple of bags, some pillows, an apron, She’s good. I think Tess will be getting lots of pretty dresses in the near future. Maybe I’ll get some too.
• I recently discovered that the public wireless network in my office doesn’t block the same sites and ports that the normal network blocks. Nice. It’s completely random what they choose to block, which is pretty annoying. Now, I don’t have to worry about it anymore.
• My new favorite grain: farro. Also labeled hulled wheat, it has this really cool chewey texture and nutty, slightly sweet flavor. I bought a bag of what I thought was the right thing at a nearby Greek grocery store, but the package didn’t have any English on it. I took a chance, and we boiled it and mixed in green olives, lemon zest, olive oil, parsley, and scallions. It was a winner.
• Our chives dn oregano are starting to pop through the ground. Ah, Spring weather is on the way. Finally.
• I’m pretty sure we made enough food for Tess yesterday to last her until her 4th birthday. I tell you what, that girl eats well. Turkey, pork, lamb, chicken, cheese, corn, zucchini, green beans, edamame, squash, carrots, apples, pears, mango, bananas, chickpeas, lentils, crackers, cheerios, dried cranberries, etc. At this point, we’ll let her try bites of whatever we’re eating, and so far, she likes it all. I know we’re lucky that she’ll eat anything, so let’s hope that it stays that way.

• Did you miss me last week? It’s ok. I’m still alive. It was my first week of school, so I was a bit preoccupied for pretty much every second of every day last week. I haven’t been that busy in a really long time. I don’t think I read a newspaper, magazine, or website, or watched a single tv show or listened to any music for the entire week. And I think I saw the Lovely Tess for all of 5 minutes. Not a whole lot of fun. The actual school part was really good and I’m really excited for it, but I missed having a life. It will pretty much be the equivalent of having a second job for the next two years. I’m planning on still updating this, but you’ll have to forgive me if I start slacking a little bit. If you want to know what’s going on with me, you might actually have to do something crazy like emailing me or calling me. I always have time to say hi.
• In the run up to last week, but home PC picked the perfect time to die. Seriously, that’s exactly what I wanted to be doing last weekend, right? The problem was that the computer would just shut down for no apparent reason and in no discernible pattern. It would be on for hours on end and then shut down, or it could be on for 5 minutes and shut down. I couldn’t figure out what the problem was, and we actually talked about getting rid of it all together. Did we really need a separate PC if we each had our own MacBook? Not wanting to waste the entire weekend, I made a deal with the Lovely Suse that if I couldn’t fix it in a day, I would take it apart and sell off the pieces. Luckily (I guess), I figured out that the video card was busted (and after three trips to Microcenter), it was fixed. I think. It’s still having a few issues, but for the time being, we’re back in business. I hate PC’s.
• The Lovely Tess has been given the green light to eat everything except nuts, honey, and shellfish. So obviously, it was time for her first slice of pizza. Luckily, we happened to be passing Frank Pepe’s on Saturday, so I was proud to have her first slice be one of the best in the land. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her so happy to eat, just shoveling the pieces into her face as fast as she could. She had a big smile on her face for the rest of the day. Yes, she is officially my daughter.
• After many failed attempts at making fries at home, I finally found a recipe that works: Jamie Oliver’s “April’s Rosemary Straw Potatoes with Lemon Salt”. Holy crap these were good. All nice and crispy and salty and good, even after they had cooled down. Whereas in the past, I’ve cooked the fried twice, once at 350 and a second fry at 375 and then drained them on paper towels, this recipe has them fried just once at 350. After draining them, I dropped them into a metal bowl with the lemon salt and tossed them to coat them and cool them off (the steam is partly what was making them soggy). Once cooled slightly, I dropped them onto to paper towels to absorb any remaining oil and then transferred them to a bowl after cooling. Oh were they tasty. I was on the verge of completely giving up on making fries (much like I’ve given up on making Indian food and Chinese food), but this one is a winner.
• Wow, this looks familiar.
• It’s official: everyone we know is pregnant.

• The snow was gone, the sun was out, and it was time to fire up the grill yesterday. Unlike last year when I grilled at some point every month of the year, as soon as the snow hit this year, I was done. My grill has been buried in snow for the better part of the winter, and I just wasn’t motivated to go out in the cold and fire it up. I’ve been just fine staying in and braising instead. Yesterday, though, I was craving something grilled, and the weather was cooperating. Let the grilling begin!
• I think I’m handling this whole daylight savings time thing ok this year. We’re up so early anyways that it’s always dark out when we wake up during the week. But when it’s still light out later in the day, it just makes me feel a whole lot happier.
• As of March 1, Whole Foods stopped offering plastic bags for your groceries, and I hope that more stores follow in their path. Even though we use canvas bags for our groceries, we still have a mountain of plastic bags in our house from other places. Target was always the worst offender as they would literally put one thing in each bag until we finally started telling them to load them up with as much as they could. Maybe we just need to get some more giant reusable bags for our trips there.
• My home PC started acting all funky last week and was shutting off randomly for no particular reason. I thought it was a problem with the video card and made a trip to the Geek Store (as the Lovely Suse calls it) to get a new one, but that didn’t fix the problem. I finally noticed that the computer was only reporting half of the RAM that I actually have installed, so i unplugged and plugged back in both memory modules and the problem seems to be fixed. Computers are stupid.
• One of my school asssignments is to watch October Sky, which I watched on Friday night. I have to admit, it got a little dusty in the house toward the end of the movie.
• Can some one please explain to me what they do with Facebook? I understand that high school and college kids use it for, um, I don’t know, posting pictures of each other and leaving messages for each other and meeting people or something? Honestly, I don’t really know. But what do “adults” do with it? The only networking site that I’m a part of is LinkedIn, which I’m also not completely clear what people do with it other than compiling as many connections as possible.

• The most addictive kid’s snack of all time: animal crackers. After grabbing a few from a bowl in a kid’s store a few weeks back, I immediately wanted more of my own. I now have a big container at work and at home, and I’m having a hard time staying away from them. George and the Lovely Tess enjoy them too.
• It’s also Girl Scout cookie time, as once again, I got guilted into buying more boxes from a co-worker’s daughter. When he actually brings the girl to work to go from office to office, how can you say no? So I bought two more boxes of Thin Mints to go along with the two boxes I bought last year that I’ve barely touched. It scares me that these never go bad. I can only imagine the nutritious chemicals involved! Still, a Thin Mint straight out of the freezer is a delicious treat.
• Yes, that was two cookie items in a row.
• We signed up for a CSA this year. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and it’s a way for farms to lock in cash early in the year so that they can afford to run. You pay a certain amount before the growing season begins, and staring in June, we get a big box of produce every week. We chose The Farm School as they always have the best stuff every week at the Farmer’s Market and they’re set up to teach future generations of farmers and kids, and they have local pickup near our house. We had wanted to do a CSA last year, but with Tess on the way, we didn’t know if we’d be able to handle it. We can’t wait for this season to begin.
• Things that were organized/cleaned out this weekend: the freezer, the pantry cabinets, the cabinet underneath the sink, my old file box. We like The Container Store. I also streamlined my email Inbox by unsubscribing from every one of those promotional emails from The Gap, Amazon, TigerDirect, Banana Republic, etc. Although now, I get practically no emails. My RSS feeds have also been cleaned out, unsubscribing from feeds that I never get around to reading.
• I thought this was a joke, but apparently St. Patrick’s Day has been moved to March 15 this year because it conflicts with Holy Week. Does this mean that Boston is going to move Evacuation Day to the 15th as well, since I’m convinced that the City made this holiday up so that everyone can a day off to get drunk on St. Patty’s Day. But since the 15th is a Saturday, will they still get the day off on the 17th?
• We tried making this frogurt this weekend and straight out of the ice cream maker, it was really good. After a few hours in the freezer, however, it was one giant, inpenetrable block of ice. I guess one will need some tweaking.
• At what point will I start to get used to the childproof locks on our cabinets? The entire weekend I kept trying to open the cabinets, get stuck on the lock, and then start swearing at the stupid locks. Hey, I guess they work for adults too. I already can’t wait until I can take them off.
• This is the last week of the Lovely Suse’s Hell Season. We’ll all be happy to have her back.

• Something…. happened to us this past week. I don’t know how it happened or what brought it on, but some switch in our brains flipped. Let’s just say that there are lists, file folders, Moleskines, and a whole lot of streamlining going on. With our lives getting increasingly more complicated and busy, and with things starting to pile up and fall through the cracks at home, it was time to finally get organized. And boy does it feel good.
• In order to make room for a filing cabinet in our desk area, I had to make some adjustments to our computer setup. With space at a premium, it was time to finally deal with some cord and cable management issues that have been bugging me. With the help of some Industrial Strength Velcro, it’s all under control. All cables are velcroed to the back wall and underside of the desk, including my router, power bricks, and powerstrips. Seriously, I think I could hang from the ceiling with this stuff.
• We’ve discovered what it’s like to live with a mobile child. The Lovely Tess started scooting all over the place on her butt, so emergency babyproofing is under way. This little girl is trouble. Poor George is worried already.
• We’ve finally had the conversation with our upstairs neighbors about buying a snowblower for next winter, and it’s a go. Thank God. We’re too old for shoveling. I can’t frgging wait. We got hit with another winter storm last week, which is hopefully the last one of the year. It’s Mother Nature saying “Hey, just so you know who’s still in charge, don’t think that the 60 degree day last week means that winter is over.” It happens every year.
• As you can tell from my Last.fm, I’ve been listening to Vampire Weekend a lot lately. I can’t remember the last time I listened to an album this much, but with all of the hype they’ve been getting of late, it’s hard to avoid them. It’s become the official soundtrack of dancing around the house with the Lovely Tess.
• We now have a giant bread paddle hanging in our kitchen. I just hope that it doesn’t fall down and kill some one.
• Is it just me or does Spring Training start earlier and earlier every year? I never remember it starting just a couple of weeks after the Super Bowl. Not that I’m complaining.

• Well, we no longer have an exploding furnace in our basement, which is nice. The large chunk of change we had to shell out to make that happen isn’t so nice. Plumbers make some good cash, huh?
• In the process of leaving our side door open for the plumber last week, I discovered the weatherstripping on the door was pretty much completely worthless. The note that I taped to the inside of the door was literally blowing in the breeze from the drafts that were coming in. Not good. I fixed that with some new weatherstripping and a new storm door bottom so now we should be sealed tight. Oh, and nothing is more frustrating then getting the stripping installed all nice and snug to the door and then after a half hour of work screwing it in realize that the door no longer closes. Twice. The first time the door wouldn’t close all the way. The second time the deadbolt wouldn’t close. I’m obviously an idiot.
• Our old 27 inch tv has a new home somewhere in Brooklyn. The struggle to get it out of the house was nothing compared to what it would have been trying to get it down into the basement to sit and rot for years. I hope it enjoys its new home.
• Speaking of our rotting basement, we spent yesterday morning cleaning it up. The only word I can use to descibe it was “shameful”. The amount of baby crap and boxes that had accumulated had gotten out of control, and the place needed a serious vacuuming. I filled an entire vacuum bag with the amount of dirt and dust and cobwebs that were there. It was long overdue and we managed to get rid of/recycle/donate lots of stuff.
• Here’s a little known fact about me: I have never drank a cup of coffee in my entire life. Until yesterday. I don’t know where the aversion of coffee came from, but it’s just something that I never started drinking. Maybe it was because I didn’t want the caffeine (despite the availability of decaf) or maybe I didn’t want to become one of those people who couldn’t get going in the morning with a cup. Or maybe I didn’t want to be one of those people who would hold up a dinner table while I drank my coffee (nothing was more excruciating growing up than having to wait at a restaurant for my parents to finish their coffee after dinner). It’s not that I didn’t like the smell or flavor it it, both of which I really like (I’ve had sips of it and like coffee flavored things). I just never started and I figured, hey, why start now? Well, that all changed after recently seeing some one on tv use a Bialetti Moka Express. Something about it just struck a chord with me. I loved the design and the simplicity of it and the coffee that came out of it looked really rich and good. I wanted one. I didn’t know if I would actually enjoy the coffee, but I liked the idea of it. We finally picked one up yesterday along with some Illy coffee and brewed up our first pot. It was tasty. I don’t see myself drinking it every day, but as a social thing or as a treat I’m up for it.
• The best baby toys ever: a wooden spoon and Tupperware.
• We deep fried things twice this weekend. Once we we made burgers and fries on Saturday night and then again on Sunday when we made falafel. But as the Lovely Suse says “I don’t really consider falafel deep fried.” Sure, that works. It’s nice to know that our falafel mix freezes well also.
• Another new show from the fine folks at BBC America: Last Restaurant Standing. Those Brits just do such a fantastic job with food reality shows. I’ll expect Fox to do a terrible version of it sometime in the near future.

• Well, we finally pulled the trigger on got us a big ol’ HD TV. After searching high and low for the 32 inch model that I wanted, I got the idea to measure our cabinet one more time. Turns out that we could actually just barely fit in a 37 inch one instead. Score! We picked up a Tivo HD to go along with it, and after getting the hookup from Verizon, we were in business. Simply put, we were stunned. The picture quality is just amazing. So much so that we’ll just sit there and watch anything as long as it’s in HD. Even commercials. The level of detail is incredible (with the Food Network being the most impressive). TV just got a whole lot better. Does anyone want a 27 inch Sony TV? Seriously, it still works great, but we just don’t have any place to put it. All you need to do is come over and pick it up.
• As we speak, our old, exploding furnace is being yanked from our basement. For some reason, our kitchen had its own furnace, which is just stupid. It will be added on as a second zone to our other furnace, and hopefully, our house will no longer suffer from earth-shaking explosions at 5AM.
• Esquire has a fantastic article called The Encyclopedia of Sandwiches which highlights the greatest sandwiches in the land. It’s really a great read and has some tasty photos and recipes. My favorite is the White Trash Monte Cristo which consists of a PB&J dipped in pancake batter and then deep fried. Holy crap.
• Over the course of last week, the Lovely Tess got two teeth, started almost standing up on her own, is scooting around the house on her butt, is wearing pretty barrette’s in her increasingly growing hair, and got upgrades to her carseat and stroller. They’re not kidding when they say that kids grow up fast. By the end of next week, I expect her to be asking for her own cell phone and going on dates.
• We have categorized Tess’s poops into different levels. The worst is a level 5 poop which requires a full bath to recover from. We had multiple level 5’s to deal with last week. Not fun.
• I’ve been wresting with my dryer vent for the past two days. So far, the dryer vent is winning.
• Yesterday was the strangest weather I’ve ever seen. At various times during the day it was perfectly sunny, cloudy, wind-whipped rain, sleet, snow, thunder, and finally bone-chilling cold and howling winds. Weather is stupid.
• The Chocolate-covered hazelnuts from Tom and Sally’s Handmade Chocolates are perhaps the most addictive candy I’ve ever had.

• Needless to say, I’m not a happy camper this morning. The thought of the Pats losing was never really ever considered, so I was a little speechless after the game. The entire New England population is a little depressed today. Tess is obviously especially sad.
• On the bright side, Tess got two teeth last week. We were beginning to think that we’d need to get her little baby dentures. I was thinking about getting her a nice platinum grill.
• I’d like to thank the fine folks over at TurboTax. It was an especially simple tax year for us, so within about 20 minutes of receiving my W2 in the mail, our taxes were done and filed, and we’ll get our refund next week.
• I bought an entire box of Odwalla Superfood bars last week. They’re sort of scary looking because they’re bright green, but they’re tasty and good for you. I’m also guessing that I’m going to get sick of them after two days, so i might have these around for a little while. Maybe I shouldn’t have bought a whole box of them, huh?
• Pretty much everyone we know is pregnant right now. I think five friends of ours have babys on the way and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of a couple more by the end of the year. Apparently, it’s the cool thing to do right now. Just look at all the Hollywood types who are having kids.
• We’re hoping to use some of our tax refund to buy a new TV for the living room. My 10 year old Sony 27″ CRT is still working ok, but it’s quickly becoming apparent that the picture quality is crap. Of course that would require buying a new Tivo as well. Of course that all now hangs on whether or not we have to buy a new furnace since there are apparently explosions happening in our old one. Ugh.
• We had our first nice dinner out in a while with a visit to Ten Tables. The name says it all, as the place is tiny. We sat at the “Chef’s Table”, which was essentially a bar right in front of the tiny kitchen, and it was pretty fantastic watching them cook for everyone. The two guys cooking were both amazingly quiet and efficient and calm, churning out one plate after the next. You quickly realize how much of prefessional cooking is in the prep work, as the actual work done during service is basically heating things that has been prepped earlier along with cooking proteins and assembling plates. The food was great, the service perfect, and it was just our sort of tiny neighborhood place.
• Barbara’s Bakery Chocolate Chip Snackimals are pretty fantastic. They might be for kids, but I’ll be eating them until Tess is old enough to eat cookies.

• Doesn’t it seem like I’m complaining every week about how I’m sick or the Lovely Tess is sick or the Lovely Suse is sick? Well, I was sick again last week with a nasty stomach virus that knocked me on my ass for two days. Tons of fun. Before Tess came along, I would get exactly two colds a year. One at the start of winter and another at the start of spring. Obviously, the Lovely Tess is an oozing bucket of germs that she brings home from daycare, and the incredible goop that she’s constantly sneezing out is evidence of that. Luckily, she’s extremely cute, so I can forgive her for my sickness.
• I learned during my sick time in bed watching daytime TV that the Today show is on for approximately 13 hours a day, and each segment is about 45 seconds long. They’re constantly running short on time and have to cut guests off, but they have 13 frigging hours of showtime? Can’t they let the cooking guy finish up his dish for once?
• Nothing makes for a good party like Guitar Hero. Sure, it’s fun to stand around and have some food and drinks and talk to people for a while, but the real fun starts when people start rocking out. I would have been happy to play about 20 games in a row, but that would have been a little rude. What really surprised me was that some people didn’t want to or were embarrassed to play. They’d say things like “I need a few more drinks before I can play”, as if it was karaoke or something. All you do is stand there and press buttons, although I try to jump around and put on a good performance. I think I might need to own this.
• We finished up every episode of Weeds in record time. We would average about 2 episodes per night, with the occasional 4 episode night thrown in. And I want more. With the writer’s strike it might be a very long time before we see any new episodes, which I am not ok with.
• The Lovely Suse and I got into a discussion about our alarm clocks last night. We each have our own, and each has its own quirks. Mine is about 20 years old, and the radio reception isn’t the best. Many mornings, I wake up to complete static. But I like that it’s small and doesn’t take up a lot of room on my nightstand. The Lovely Suse has a curious habit of resetting her alarm when it goes off in the morning rather than hitting the snooze button. It sounds like Mission Control over there as she’s flipping switches and pressing buttons. She told me that she “doesn’t trust it.” For years, so was convinced that the time between snoozes changed a little bit every day, with it starting at ten minutes and over the span on months would stretch out to ten minutes. She finally realized that the snooze time was actually programmable and she unknowingly was changing the snooze time little by little every day. Last night she set it for 5 minutes, and of course, it actually went off after 7. I think it’s time for us both to get new alarm clocks.
• We’re hardly ones to eat the same thing week after week as we like to keep things interesting and have some variety in our meals. But we’ve eaten Whole Foods Roasted Tomato Basil soup for lunch three weekends in a row. Tomatoes, onions, leeks, basil, and some spices and that’s about that’s all that’s in it, and it’s just simple and tasty. Hell, I’d be happy eating that again today for lunch.
• My bro hooked my folks up with an HDMI cable for their HDTV and it was the first time that I’ve been just plain astounded at the quality of the HD picture. My dad was watching golf and you could see every blade of grass, every detail of the course, and every ripple and reflection of water. Until now, I’ve just never been that impressed with most HD pictures, so who knew what a difference a little cable made. Ok, this will be the year that we finally get one. Maybe.

Everyone loves to give baby advice. Everyone is an expert. And course, everyone is batsh*t insane. Seriously, it’s impossible to wade through all of the advice that various online sources, family, and friends offer, and it’s enough to make a person feel completely overwhelmed. When it comes to baby equipment and supplies, this is no exception. I’ve had a bunch of emails from people recently asking me about various items, and with a bunch of our friends jumping on the baby train, we figured we might as well share some of our own experiences. Take these for what they are: our own experiences and situations. These won’t work for everyone, but they work for us. As a general rule, we tried to be pretty minimalistic with space-saving and eco-friendliness in mind. I’m no expert, so if I have some facts wrong, just ignore them. So without further ado…

Strollers: Obviously, there are tons of options to choose from. Many people feel inclined to get the biggest and baddest around for attacking the harsh city streets. Something to keep in mind, however, is that you actually have to carry the thing around. Up and down stairs, on to buses, etc. Before you buy anything, try picking it up and walking around with it. Strollers like the Bugaboos are also not the easiest to fold up, which is another consideration (not to mention the cost of add-ons and accessories. I got over my Bugaboo envy in a hurry). We personally went with the Peg Perego Aria, which weighs in at 9 pounds and can be folded up with one hand, and takes up almost no room in a closet at home. The next model up was 10 pounds heavier with not a whole lot of added features, as far as we could tell. Some of the expensive ones are well over 20 pounds and take up a lot of space at home. The “travel systems” combine the stroller and carseat into one package, but they’re more of a ploy to you to buy both from the same company. Many carseats are interchangeable with various strollers, but it all depends on the stroller. Most will only take a few different other brands. Much of the choice will come down to how you plan on using it and how much you plan on using it. We’ve ended up using ours very little as we mostly chose to use a sling when Tess was younger. If we were in a city where we were walking around outdoors all the time, we may have chosen a different one.

Carseats: Despite what some people think, infant carseats are actually used for the first year (or until 20 pounds, i think). No baby is outgrowing one in four months. At that point, you move up to the bigger, forward-facing carseats. They make some that are convertible that do both jobs, but then you lose out on the whole snap-into-the-stroller thing. Again, we have the Peg Perego, mainly because it snaps into our stroller. It weighs a ton, but for compatibility reasons, we had no choice. There are certainly lighter and smaller ones out there that most people use.

Carriers: Baby Bjorns and slings are a great thing to have, especially when moving in tight spots where you don’t want to use or lug the stroller. Plus, they’re good for that whole bonding thing. We got a hand-me-down Baby Bjorn from my brother and never used it. We could hardly figure out how to put it on, and it pretty much required two people to make it work. Other people love them. We both got Hotslings which are fantastic. They’re light, compact, and easy to throw in a bag, and they’re simple to put your baby in it, even by yourself. The great thing about them is that your baby is close to you, and they can either choose to face outward and see what’s going on or get snuggled in and go to sleep. There are many similar brands out there that all do pretty much the same thing. We’ve had great experiences with these though.

Diapers: If you’re planning on doing cloth diapers or something like the gDiapers, that’s great. Those weren’t really an option for us, but we quickly latched onto the Seventh Generation diapers. Non-chlorine, no nasty fake baby powder smell, great fit, no silly cartoon characters, and no real difference in price. Seriously, you can barely smell a poop through these things. While you won’t find giant boxes of them on sale, they’re consistently priced competitively at places like Babys R Us. While they might be $13.99 or more at Whole Foods, they’re $10.99 at BRU. I don’t know how your options are
limited in the city though.

Bottles: We started with the Dr. Brown’s bottles, but once the whole BPA stuff came out, we made the switch to Born Free bottles. They use the same Dr. Brown’s nipples, which is convenient.

Diaper Pail: You need a diaper pail. You really don’t want an open container of dirty diapers lying around. Those things stink. People tend to choose between the Diaper Champ and the Diaper Genie. We chose the champ based solely on the fact that it takes normal kitchen trash bags. The Genie requires that you buy special bags, which is just a pain. We love it.

Activity Mats/Saucers/Seats: We mainly used 3 or 4 devices to keep our hands free and the baby occupied. Some sort of musical bouncy seat was key. Volume controls are a must . We used it mainly in the kitchen so that we could make meals and eat together. We’d just pull the chair right next to the table so Tess could hang out with us while we ate. Along the same lines, a swing was a good thing to have. They’re great to putting fussy kids to sleep and keep them calm, if need be. As she got older, a Bumbo came in handy. Some people love the activity mats that have the stuff hanging overhead, but we didn’t use it a ton. We got one as a hand-me-down, and it did the trick every now and then. One final thing that we originally said that we didn’t want but quickly came to realize that it’s a life saver is an exersaucer. We figured that they give kids ADD, but they’re actually great for keeping kids entertained for a while, helps them work on their motor skills, and if you get one of the smaller ones, they don’t take up much space. For us, the fewer bells and whistles and blinking lights the better, and we’ve been happy with ours. A doorway jumper is also good, but it didn’t work with our house.

Cleaning Products: Method, Method, Method. I can’t say enough about how much I love all things Method. From our laundry detergent to our kitchen mop, I’ve totally drank the Method Kool-Aid. We’ve tried to remove all toxic cleaners and chemical from the house, and this was an easy and inexpensive way to do it. We’ve never used any baby-specific laundry detergent or cleaners. The Method stuff is non-toxic and works well and if your kid happens to be licking the floor where you just mopped, it’s ok. Remember that kids stick everything in their mouths and are on the floor all the time. Do you want stuff covered in chemicals?

Babys R Us Credit: Remember, just like when you got married and registered for stuff, everything can be returned for credit. And BRU will take back ANYTHING. Everyone will want to buy you gifts, so that more you register for, the better. Give everyone low-priced options and then you can return whatever duplicates you don’t need. Rather than relying on people to pony up the cash for expensive car seats and strollers and the like, know that the credit will quickly accumulate. We quickly got enough to buy our carseat and have enough leftover to buy the next sized up carseat and still have lots to spare. However, if family or friends offer to buy some of the big ticket items, even better!

For all of this stuff, we’ve tried to limit the amount of plastics/lights/annoying sounds as much as possible, but with some of this stuff, you don’t have a whole lot of choice. You’ll quickly realize what stuff is just crap and what is good. Use hand-me-downs whenever possible. Why spend more money and add more junk to the environment? I appologize if I’ve offended anyone’s personal choices or parenting style, but like I said, this is just what we’ve chosen to do. Take it all with a grain of salt. I’m barely scratching the surface when it comes to baby gear, but this is at least a start. Any questions? Ask away!

• I finally joined the cult of Apple last week with the purchase of my shiny new black MacBook. Or as Susanne calls it, my “girlfriend”. I’ll admit that I’ve been spending a lot of time with it since I got it, but I’m just trying to get everything set up to my liking as well as installing Windows XP on it with Boot Camp. The best of both worlds. And yes, I love it.
• The Pats are in the Super Bowl, again! Tess is going to have a skewed view of the Boston sports world with the Sox winning the World Series, the Pats running the table, and the Celtics in first place. The Bruins? Who’s that? I don’t recognize them as a professional sports team anymore. They’re dead to me. Go Pats!
• I haven’t taken my boots off for the past week. They’re so warm and comfortable that I can’t wear anything else. One word: sheepskin. That’s one word, right?
• We had a terrible dinner again last night. Twice in two weeks! It wasn’t my fault this time. I followed this recipe (although I substituted tandoori paste for vindaloo paste because I couldn’t find any), but the chicken came out with this really weird texture. It was fully cooked, but was almost gelatin-y. It was gross. It’s one thing to screw up a weeknight dinner, but it’s something entirely different to mess up Sunday chicken. Boooooo!
• The lovely Suse worked something like 13 days in a row and it enjoying a much-deserved day off today. I’m very jealous.
• I got suckered into buying Girl Scout cookies last week at work. Seriously, when a guy sends his 8 year old daughter into your office to sell you cookies, how can you say no? I bought two boxes of thin mints, just like last year. And I still have mostly full boxes from last year. The frightening thing is that these cookies never seem to go bad. I can only imagine the crap and preservatives in them. But they sure are tasty.
• For some reason, our neighborhood smells like maple syrup. It’s smelled like that for the past 24 hours. I can’t explain it, but I like it.

• You know what sucks? Being sick. You know what sucks worse? Being sick on the weekend? You know what’s worse that that? Being sick on a weekend when the Lovely Suse works both days. It was not a fun weekend. I’m all for all-natural homeopathic remedies for sicknesses, but sometimes, drugs rule. Gimme some pills and lozenges and sprays and make me feel better ASAP.
• Sometimes when you’re sick, there are certain foods that remind you of when you were sick as a child and make you feel better. This weekend I had tomato soup and grilled cheese one day and a fluffernutter on the other. I really wanted a peanut butter and jelly but the only jam/jelly we had in the house was an unopened jar of Stonewall Kitchens Maine Wild Blueberry Jam that expired in 2004.
• If anyone who watches Weeds knows how to get the theme song out of their head, please let me know. I’ve had “Little Boxes” in my head for two weeks straight. I swear, I sang that song in elementary school. Is that possible? I distinctly remember a song with “ticky tacky” in it, and I can’t imagine that’s a popular song lyric.”
• I’m a little more excited about the speculation of what will be introduced at MacWorld this year as I’m actually planning on buying a Mac in the next few weeks. Hopefully, they’ll introduce a new macbook that can vacuum my house, floss my teeth, do my taxes, fit into my back pocket, and costs $10.
• For the second time in two weeks, one of my waffle-knit shirts caught on fire after lighting a match. A spark hit the shirt and small flames ripped across my chest and shoulders. It quickly went out, leaving a bad smelling burning odor. But what are the fricking odds of that happening twice in two weeks? I guess these shirts are highly flammable?
• I was so out of it on Saturday night that I barely remember watching the Pats playoff game. They won, right? I’m pretty sure I ate some ribs, too, but again, I can’t confirm this.
• The dinner I made on thursday night was just plain bad. I was attemping to make thisnoodle soup and I couldn’t find the ginger-soy broth that I used last time. Instead, I took vegetable broth and added ginger, soy, garlic, chiles, cilantro, and scallions and let it boil for a while. In the end the broth was terrible. Pretty much inedible. We managed to eat the noodles and shrimp and call it a day, but I didn’t bother taking the leftovers for lunch the next day. Hey, they can’t all be winners folks. Even I have off days.

I’ll be honest with you. I”m not the biggest fan of meetings. Let me clarify that. I hate meetings where I have no input, don’t care about the subject, and frankly don’t need to be there. I’m lucky enough that these meetings are few and far between, but in most cases, I struggle to stay awake. It’s really bad. It’s not that I’m necessarily tired, but just bored out of my skull and have employed every technique I can think of to keep my eyes open. Sometimes, I try drinking a lot of water or tea, but that just makes me have to get up and go to the bathroom. In extreme cases, I’ll put my hands into my pockets and rip out leg hairs.
Seriously.

I recently came across another attempt of mine from about a year ago to stave off boredom. Writing random, stream-of-consciousness, insane crap. In the back page of a notebook that I just finished, I found the following entry:

“I like to eat fudge. Fudge is wicked tasty. You know what else is tasty? Cheese. I love cheese. I could eat cheese every day. That would rule. I should go get me some cheese to eat right now. A nice big hunk of it for lunch. That would be tasty. You know what else is tasty? Ice cream. I like all sorts of different flavors. Mint chocolate chip, cookies and cream, black raspberry, malted vanilla chip, really anything with chips in it is good in my book.”

These, my friends, are the ramblings of a mad man.

I don’t know why I’ve had such a hard time writing the year-end best-of list this year. Maybe it has something to do with the year being dominated by a little thing called Tess, and I don’t really remember anything else that happened last year. Let’s try anyways, mostly because I’m sick of the Lovely Suse pestering me to write it.

• I was home with a sick Lovely Tess for most of last week, so it was a pretty uneventful one. On the bright side, I got to spend most of the days watching daytime TV and daytime cooking shows. God, there are a lot of terrible ones, but they’re almost more fun to watch. I just get angry and curse at the TV. Sandra Lee, I’m talking to you.
• In the wake of the writer’s strike and our Tivo being completely empty of any new shows, we’ve started watching Weeds. We’ve just finished up season one, and what a fantastic show. I think we’re going to churn through seasons two and three in a hurry.
• The most exciting part of my work week was getting one of those mice with the click-wheels. Yeah, it doesn’t take much these days.
• I finally have some warm winter boots. I’ve had warm boots for the past few years, but they were big-ass things that I couldn’t really wear around indoors. I needed something that I could wear everywhere so I didn’t have to carry my shoes to work in a separate bag and constantly be changing footwear. The folks at Nordstrom now know me by sight since I had to go there three times to find the right one and in the right size. I’m a big pain in the ass, obviously. But I love my boots. I’ll be living in them for the winter.
• It’s blood orange season, people. Get ‘em while you can. We keep eating them until we finally OD on them in a couple of months.
• Our family has taken to using Skype to contact us instead of using the phone. It’s sort of weird. I think there are about 2 people who call us on our landline at this point. Good thing we pay $50/month for those 2 people. Grrrr.
• After a stellar run, Robert has left the building. Our favorite cheeseman and good friend has packed his cheesebags and is moving on to bigger and better things. We’re going to miss him on our Saturday visits to Formaggio, but I’m sure we’ll still be seeing plenty of him. Still, it’s the end of an era and long overdue.
• I love having the Christmas tree, but as soon as New Years passes, I’m ready to get that thing out of my house. It was so dry I’m pretty sure it was a fire hazard anyways.